IN THE understatement of the year, the new leader of the TUC Paul Nowak warned yesterday that further strikes could lie ahead in 2023 unless the government enters talks with unions over wages. This is not news for workers!
General Secretary Nowak has replaced Frances O’Grady as head of the TUC. His message was workers ‘feel that they have no alternative to strike’ because of the rising costs they are facing.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on his first full day in the job, he said: ‘Our message to the government is you have to talk and you have to come to a compromise.’
This is absolute nonsense. The government are not only not talking, they are bringing in new anti-union laws and have already used the police and the army as strike-breakers and have vowed to continue to do so.
Nowak chooses to close his eyes to the real world where Royal Mail is being plundered by the bosses and the railways have been looted by the privateers – with the bosses determined to close all ticket offices and rip up all health and safety measures.
He added: ‘When you think about those energy bills landing, the cost of the weekly shop, filling up your car, rents and mortgages going up, the one thing that isn’t going up is wages.’ In fact, the mass strike movement that has emerged is precisely to make sure that working class families do not starve or freeze.
What frightens the likes of Nowak is that the working class is fighting, it is far to the left of the TUC and is demanding that the trade union leaders bring down the Tories with a general strike, or make way for new leaders who will!
In the middle of a huge strike wave, he remarked that the decision to strike was a ‘really difficult’ one for trade union members, who often lose out on pay during walk-outs. Workers are now striking and signalling that they are ready for a revolution to get rid of capitalism and to keep their children from starving
Nowak also accused the government of the obvious, of ‘hiding behind’ pay review bodies and refusing to negotiate on wages for those who work in the public sector, such as nurses and doctors.
He, however, refused to pledge that the powerful TUC will be taking action on behalf of all workers by calling a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and a workers state.
Nowak got no further than lamenting: ‘Rather than sitting down with unions to negotiate a resolution, ministers seem more interested in escalating disputes.
‘The UK already has the most restrictive trade union laws in western Europe – but ministers are set to undermine the right to strike even more. That will tilt the balance of power even further towards bad bosses and make it harder for working people to win better pay and conditions.’
He continued: ‘Have no doubt: I will lead the union movement in opposing further restrictions on the right to strike – just as we will oppose further attacks on any rights at work, including those rights that came from the EU.’
He however refused to call for a general strike stating: ‘But I don’t want us to spend our time just fighting bad laws – I want the trade union movement to set out a positive vision for Britain. Because we know it doesn’t have to be like this.’
Workers do not want a few fine words, they want action to bring the Tories down and bring in socialism.
The most that Nowak would offer was: ‘Working people deserve a seat at the tables of power – and it’s the job of unions to get them there. That’s why, when I’m asked, I always say that my first priority is building a stronger, bigger and more diverse trade union movement.’
The fact is that the Tories are not interested in talking. They are not even interested in tolerating trade unions. In a period of capitalist crisis they are interested in smashing trade unions using the law and illegality, the military and the police, and then to pauperise the masses of the working class and the youth so that they can make vast profits.
This situation is not a debating matter it is a fighting matter.
The reality is that the fair words of the TUC leader are not worth a dime. There is no class compromise. There is a class struggle, and the Tories aim to place the entire burden of the crisis onto the backs of the working class. This is why they are bringing in new anti-union laws to smash workers’ right to strike!
Now is the time for the TUC to get off its knees and to call the general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a nationalised and planned socialist economy.
Capitalism is in crisis – in its death agony. It must be dumped by the working class into the dustbin of history via a general strike, leading to a successful socialist revolution.
What the working class needs is the new and revolutionary leadership of the Workers Revolutionary Party and its youth section the Young Socialists.
We urge you to join up today and to demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Tories to bring in a workers government and a socialist nationalised and planned economy.
